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- Hacker News
- For me, vigorous exercise, riding my bike, running, jumping rope, has always made me feel better mentally and physically whether it was a pathogen funk or just life and feeling down or symptomatic as some describe below. I always check my kids and myself after hikes, especially in tall grass or shrubs. I've found ticks here and there over the years. The cathartic effect of high-intensity exercise where you push yourself to what you think is your limit is amazing for your physical and mental well being. The old Sufi saying, "Movement is life; stillness is death" is my mantra. I have friends who avoid hiking for fear of ticks and Lyme disease. It's a shame, since being outdoors in the sun, smelling the woods, and taking in the views while walking are priceless. Movement over pharmaceuticals.by eggy
- Start thinking about α-gal syndrome, even if you're in The North. I just pulled an adult Lone Star tick off my back last night. I had no idea that they had made it to Northern Illinois. Now I get to spend the summer waiting to see if a burger is going to kill me.by miiiiiike
- While this at-home test kit is neat, there already are solutions to this problem which are likely more beneficial to the overall awareness of tick-borne illness. In the US, one can send a tick (alive, dead, in shreds) to Penn State’s tick research lab via usps and get results in just a few days. Customers can select what results they’re looking for, as ticks don’t solely carry one “lyme disease” marker.
I would feel better sending a tick that i pulled off of myself or my pets to a dedicated research lab rather than buy some one-off test kits which don’t contribute to the overall incidence rate of tick-borne illness.
I even sent a tick that I found in a potted plant from home depot (never attached to me) which turned out to carry rocky mountain spotted fever. I only sent that random tick in just to see if it carried anything, and since seeing the report from Penn State Ive wondered if i had contracted RMSF what my medical journey would have looked like, since i live on the opposite side of the continent from those ticks and i had found it mid-December. That would have required a Gregory House differential diagnosis where I live.
by dilfred - "LymeAlert seeks to help people avoid the cost and the wait of going to the emergency room after being bitten by a tick"
I might be mistaken, but I don't think you should go to the emergency room with a tick bite..? Do people really do that?
by poszlem - I like that it involves grinding up the tick. Just deserts.
- I always keep doxycyline around take a couple whenever I find a deer tick on me.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545493/table/rc1121.ap...
by billfor - https://lymealert.com/how-it-works/
I’m not optimistic this will be all that helpful. Just because the tick you found is negative, that tells you nothing about those you did not find. Just because a tick is positive, that does not mean that it has infected whoever it was attached to.
My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged. None of the ticks shown were engorged.
by mgerdts - I didn’t discover that ticks were a problem until I was in my mid 20s, and had been rolling around in deer-filled brush for years. Either I got very lucky, or have a chronic tick-borne disease.
I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. I’ve had every blood test under the sun, numerous sleep studies and tried every vitamin. I’ve had no answers and no change.
Sometimes, I've believed that it impacts my performance at work. Sometimes I feel like I should be retiring, but I’m not even 40 yet. Sometimes, it's not so bad.
I saw a video on controlled hypothermia the other day, which seems like snake oil. I guess that’s next on my list to try. I feel desperate, but I’m just having to get used to the feeling of desperation, because there appears to be no answer or solution.
by beaker52